Nick Xenophon could easily win a Senate spot and it has my blood pumping, writes Matthew Abraham

The thought of Nick Xenophon returning to politics has Matthew Abraham’s blood pumping. And he could easily win.

Come back Nick, all is forgiven. Just the slightest hint of the Fourth Coming of Nick Xenophon, patron saint of lost causes, is enough to get the blood pumping. Pinch me, I’m dreaming. Could it possibly be true?

Last week’s Sunday Mail broke the news that the former South Australian Upper House MP, former Senator and spectacularly failed candidate for the state seat of Hartley at the 2018 election is “seriously considering” running again for a Senate seat.

This time it’s not pokies nor threats to SA’s submarine deal luring him from the wilderness, but something far more pedestrian, literally. Ugg boots.

Mr Xenophon is one of the lawyers representing Sydney shoemaker Eddie Oygur in a case against US outdoor clothing giant Deckers over the right to market his sheepskin boots as “uggs”.

He says if Australia intervenes in the US court action we’ll stand a chance at retaining the freedom to call an ugg an ugg. But he’s so cranky at what he dubs the Morrison government’s “couldn’t give a stuff” attitude he’s threatening a Senate tilt in the hope it’ll bring them to their senses.

It’s a trademark case that is just so trademark Xenophon.

Nick Xenophon, when he was leader of SA-BEST but failed to win a seat, with the party’s newly elected members of the Legislative Council, Connie Bonaros and Frank Pangallo in 2018 on the steps of Parliament House. Picture: AAP / Mike Burton

After almost four years as a media recluse, hawking his legal wares while robed in sackcloth and ashes, talk of his return conjures up an image of him staggering unshaven out of a blackened landscape, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and a pair of uggs. Like Tom Hanks in Castaway, will he have spent too long marooned, communing with a basketball? W-i-l-s-o-n!

Remember Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution? Way too classy for a state that regards a Vili’s goulash pie as a peak dining experience. No, Nick’s threatening the Uggies Revolution.

For new arrivals, or those trying hard to forget, a quick recap of Xenophon the politician.

At the 1997 SA election, he left his law practice to stand for our Legislative Council on his indelible No Pokies brand. He secured just 2.86 per cent of the primary vote, or around 25,000 votes, but got over the line with preferences, making him the first independent elected to the Legislative Council in 60 years.

That was the first and only time his primary vote was in single digits. At the 2006 election, he scored a phenomenal 190,958 first-preference votes, or just over 20 per cent of the statewide total. In late 2007, he quit state politics to run for the Senate, pulling 14.78 per cent of the vote from a standing start. In the 2013 election, he grabbed 24.9 per cent of the vote, single-handedly outpolling the entire SA Labor team.

But in October 2017, Senator Xenophon embarked on one of the most spectacular acts of self-sabotage seen in Australian politics – he quit the Senate to contest the state seat of Hartley at the 2018 SA poll. Nobody really knows why including, I suspect, Nick. He lost.

Former SA politician Nick Xenophon – is he eyeing a return? Picture: Kelly Barnes/The Australia

This is a shorthand account of a political career that has rocked and rolled from the gravitas of deciding the fate of key government reforms to his many shameless stunts – my personal favourite being the day he got a trained terrier, Maxy the Wonder Dog, to rollover outside Parliament House, a dig at then-Labor premier Mike Rann’s flip-flopping. Maxy nipped Nick, but the stunt really got up Rann’s nose.

The key questions now are: Will he come back, should he and can he? He may very well give it a crack because the Morrison government is too preoccupied with bungling our Covid-19 response to risk a bunfight with our major strategic partner by meddling in a US legal case over Ugg boots.

Should he come back? Well, why not? He has at least as much to offer as any Senate candidate and more to offer than most.

Which then brings us to this: Can he win back a Senate seat he inexplicably threw away? We know from his bruising Hartley experience, particularly the outrageous campaign from the hotel lobby, that it’ll be no walk in the park.

But we also know that in any SA election a dangerous “Xenophon vote” of roughly 15 per cent is floating around the place, like an iceberg looking for something to sink. It’s worth noting that while he lost Hartley, it was still a nailbiter as he attracted nearly 25 per cent of the vote. A winning quota at a half-Senate election is 14.3 per cent.

Are we ready for the Uggies Revolution? Sure we are, as long as he’s not just filling our boots.